Pro-choice rally

Protesters say residents deserve to know the other side of the abortion debate with women having the right to choose what they do with their bodies.

About 15 residents gathered along the intersection of Memorial Avenue and Central Avenue on Saturday. Protesters held signs that read "parenting by choice not chance" and "my body my choice". The residents held the protest in response to national pro-life rally called Life Chain that happened on the weekend of Oct. 02.

Chris O’Mara, organizer of Stand Up Thunder Bay, said most of the protesters were Lakehead University and Confederation College students who wanted to bring more awareness of the pro-choice option.

O’Mara said they wanted to give the other side of the debate after they felt the earlier pro-life rally had presented a limited amount of options.

"It was time to present the other side of the opinion," O’Mara said. "Their adoption is the only option signs and their abortion is murder signs kind of set us off. We’re a bunch of women studies students. When they were presenting that as the only option, we thought the people in town deserved to know that there was another side to the story."

While more than a hundred people attended the pro-life rally compared to the pro-choice rally, O’Mara said he wasn’t discouraged by the turn out. What mattered was to bring the message that without the right to choose, women would be forced to go back to earlier abortion methods that were held in back alleys and dangerous to both the mother and child, he said.

"We’re not advocating that people should go out and have an abortion," he said. "We’re advocating that people should have the right to access safe, clean abortions in hospitals facilities. It should be a constitutional right for all women to choose if they want to continue their pregnancy."

Two weeks earlier, the pro-life advocates held their own signs that read "abortion kills children" and "adoption the loving option". Dan Somerfield, president of Thunder Bay and Area Right to Life, said in an earlier interview with Tbnewswatch.com that they were speaking for the rights of the unborn children.

Abortion isn’t illegal in Canada but Somerfield said there isn’t any reason for it and should be abolished.

"It’s an ecumenical event so Catholics, Protestants and other faiths have come together to protest against abortion and euthanasia," Somerfield said. "They come out to represent a silent witness against this culture of death. We’re here to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves."